Analyzing Effects of Obeya – A Productivity Enhancement Philosophy & Tool Using SPC

Abstract

Production assembly line is a very critical and important area of an industry as every product is unique and has distinctive manufacturing processes after the minor changes of difference in raw materials, work order machining, on floor bottleneck issues and others limitations. There are different production practices carried out by small and medium enterprises based on different production factors like Quality, Raw material shortage, Work order monitoring, Production time, and less revenue. Similarly, OBEYA is a lean engineering production practice pioneered by Toyota Production System (TPS) and later adopted in range of automotive industries. OBEYA focuses on enhancement of production performance and tools along with feedback from the departments. In this research, an empirical study was conducted implementing process control tool on an industry to study and analyse results before and after OBEYA implementation. The analysis in production process improvement was carried out using Statistical Process Control (SPC) methodology. SPC is used to bind the variation between the permissible tolerances, as it is inevitable part of any process. This paper discusses planning and implementation of SPC with lean technique (OBEYA) to study the effects on production system and eliminate the perception of OBEYA to be purely on automotive industry technique. The results of the approach supports the methodology developed and its implementation in a case industry producing ceiling fan.